On Mon, 06 Sep 2004 10:55:22 GMT, Richard Sherratt
> wrote:

>I've just dropped in to the group after a long journey elsewhere. The
>first thing that struck me was "where the devil is Shankar?" He used
>to be so regular and I loved his beautiful use of English. He was also
>very good at explaining cricket to heathens.

For those needing Shankar fix, the following appeared today in
uk.food+drink.indian in which I've see posts from Shankar a few times
over the past year or so. It's an occasionally interesting newsgroup
for those with an interest in Indian cooking.

>Path: sn-us!sn-xit-06!sn-xit-11!supernews.com!sjc1.usenetserver.com!news.usenet server.com!nf3.bellglobal.com!wn14feed!worldnet.at t.net!bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net.POSTED!53ab2750!not-for-mail
>Newsgroups: uk.food+drink.indian
>Subject: New curry bible
>From: Shankar Bhattacharyya >
>References: > > > >
>Organization: Third Eye Consulting
>Message-ID: >
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>Date: Tue, 07 Sep 2004 03:56:48 GMT
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>Xref: sn-us uk.food+drink.indian:18197
>
>"Bryan Wallwork" > wrote in
:
>
>>
>> "Mark Jeffries" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>> Hi Bryan
>>>
>>> Im new to this n/g, what are pukka dishes?
>>>
>
>> ... Pukka (meaning formal rather than genuine, but
>> usually accepted as the later) dishes are those with origins in
>> India rather than the UK.
>
>"Pukka" is an interesting word. I assume the usage in the UK comes
>from the British colonials in India. What little I know of their
>language provides a certain third-hand quality to my ear, in that it
>is the language of people no longer around, using words second-hand to
>generate a third-hand dialect. My knowledge of that sort of thing
>comes from E.M. Forster and others like him. People here might find
>entertaining a memoir by a second world war soldier called John
>Masters, titled "The Road Past Mandalay" and others of his books of a
>generally autobiographical nature. He was born in Calcutta and wrote
>about India in a much more persuasive way than Forster, say, who wrote
>really about the British, not really about India, even in A Passage to
>India.
>
>I also know some of the old British usage at fourth hand, as from
>American movies set in colonial India, such as the Hollywood
>implementation of Gunga Din, that story about a poor misguided fellow
>who did not know who he was and thereby became a character of heroic
>British folklore.
>
>However, I digress from my digression.
>
>In the northern-Indian languages "pukka" means one of two things, at
>least literally. It can mean ripe, as against "kaccha" or unripe. It
>can also mean cured, as against uncured, as in mortar. Construction
>gets described as "kaccha", to mean with mud, as gainst "pukka", to
>mean with mortar. By extension from this comes the sense of firm or
>strong as against weak, from which comes the colloquial use of
>"pukka" to mean "definite" or "absolute". People use "pukka" to
>emphasize an agreement, plans, so on and so forth.
>
>The occasional use of "pukka" to mean authentic or, almost
>equivalently, excellent, may simply be reassimilation of the British
>usage.
>
>I have no qualifications to substantiate any opinion expressed above.
>All of it is derived entirely from my fairly casual reading and from
>my dearly held biases.
>
>- Shankar